With November just around the corner in this election year of 2016, partisan political discourse is at its usual 4-year fever pitch. In antidote, I present the following collection of quotes from one of America’s great literary icons of the 19th century, Henry David Thoreau.

Thoreau is best known for Walden, his widely celebrated ode to nature and radical self-reliance. Tragically, few today are as familiar with his other works, which are no less superb, including his withering critique on the character of voting and obeisance to the State from the classic, On the Duty Of Civil Disobedience, that is said to have influenced Tolstoy and Gandhi.

As we are made to suffer yet again under a delusion that the future of the free world is staked on the outcome of another ham-handed dog and pony show, these words are worth bearing in mind, as well as taking to heart …